


Unpersons

by metalcide



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 3
Genre: It might not even be shippy, M/M, it might just be Butch being Butch, it's more about Harkness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-12
Updated: 2020-12-12
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:26:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28030002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/metalcide/pseuds/metalcide
Summary: The Institute is trying to branch out. Harkness isn't afraid, but A3-21 is. It'd be nice if his lighter worked.
Relationships: Butch DeLoria/Harkness | A3-21
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	Unpersons

**Author's Note:**

> So I scraped all the livejournal fallout kink meme fills I did while drunk 10 years ago, and decided to edit some and put them up here. This one was edited pretty heavily. (Man, did I used to get wasted.) There's another part to this one but they don't actually connect so I'm trying to figure out what to do with it. Sorry for the formatting issues

Harkness was down in the lower deck in a designated utility hall, leaning against a door and taking comfort in the cramped, tiny space of the aircraft carrier’s design. He had a cigarette between his lips and he was flicking the lighter over and over again but the lighter wasn’t working and it wouldn’t light. He heard a shaky sigh which made him look at his shaky hands and maybe the lighter wasn’t broken after all. _  
_ _  
_ But _ he  _ wasn’t broken _ ,  _ either, for damn sure, and no one was going to come after him, he knew that. But they were upstairs on the main deck, a bunch of ‘em, a whole entourage. Synths and scientists, seeing if they could have better luck with the people of the Capital Wasteland than in the Commonwealth. But he hoped he was imagining things when synths he knew – people he tracked and caught so that they could be reset, or people he reset  _ himself _ – looked him in the eye like  _ they _ knew. But they couldn’t know. A3-21 was  _ dead. _   
  
But A3-21  _ wasn’t  _ dead.  _ Harkness _ , on the other hand . . .

The other ones looked at him, too, the ones who never even considered breaking free. And then there were the ones he’d never seen before, models he didn’t recognize. Maybe—maybe they somehow just knew he was one of them. But he was just being paranoid, feeling like all eyes were on him. You couldn’t just look each other in the eye and  _ know _ . Shit, not even Zimmer, his own creator, had been able to tell, not even though Harkness’s skin and eyes were the same color as his beloved synth, same height, same build . . . 

He sighed again, shaky. More flicking, more failure. Fucking lighter. Why did he still smoke these if he was a fucking android? Why did they make him feel good? Because the A3-21 could process nicotine, among other things. An experiment in the influence biological chemicals could have on a synthetic body and an artificial intelligence.

  
He chuckled darkly. Funny, the U.S. Army liked to experiment too. His last clear memory was on the edge of a coma, a map of his brain being uploaded to a computer chip before . . . dying, he guessed. Besides the fact that his enlistment was almost over and they’d have to send him to college like they promised – they saved money by digitizing his mind instead, he was sure - he wondered what made him a good candidate for transfer to what had turned out to be Vault 116. Or, rather, what made  _ Harkness _ a good transfer.

Fuck! Someone was coming. Was it one of  _ them _ ? 

Couldn’t be. He’d told security the  _ delegates _ weren’t allowed down here. Not that they wouldn’t just kill all his people if they wanted to get down to him. But they didn’t know who he was, nobody was looking for him.

But nothing stopped anybody from just wandering around shouting out the mindwipe code for that missing A3-21, if they still had it. 

Actually, Harkness didn’t know why Zimmer didn’t just do that. It would have killed Harkness instantly. Factory reset him to brand-new, he would have never seen it coming. He would have never known it was even possible. Could’ve died a man.

But now, now he had the fear. The fear of the runaway synth, it was different than the human fear of death that Harkness had overcome so many times. Harkness was tough, but he was _ human _ , and so being Harkness didn’t get rid of  _ this _ fear.

The intruder’s steps were uneven because it was Butch and his cocky stride was unmistakable. Butch, the last person he wanted to see right now because he was the only person currently on the boat who would know exactly what was wrong. The Lone Wanderer knew too, of course, had  _ done  _ this to him, but Harkness was able to act normal long enough to trick the Lone Wanderer into thinking yeah, let’s just pretend this never happened. But Butch knew and Butch  _ lived _ here. And he  _ watched _ . 

He could smell the punk’s cigarette.   
  
Whatever dim light Harkness could see was blocked by the younger man who stopped right in front of him, right in his face, hands in his pockets, coolly regarding him with a smirk. Not just his usual asshole smirk, but an amused one. Because Harkness was still trying to light his damn cigarette. Flick, flick. Not even a spark.   
  
“Fucking lighter,” Harkness growled, not looking up.    
  
“Your hands are shaking a little,” DeLoria remarked casually, taunting him by taking a long drag from his cigarette.   
  
“Ah, shut up.” It came out like a breathless whisper, almost a plea. What the fuck was wrong with him? He was  _ Harkness _ , hardass badass veteran. If the Battle of Anchorage didn’t kill him, then a bunch of nerds upstairs sure couldn’t. 

But the Battle of Anchorage  _ had _ killed him. Harkness never woke up from that coma. And these memories, his  _ consciousness _ , just a keyword away from being taken away from him. And they weren't even his to begin with.    
  
A caring person might have covered Harkness’s shaking hand with theirs to steady it, helping him flick the lighter successfully. A sensual person might have leaned in close enough to join their lit cigarette with his, lighting it in a sort-of kiss. Butch, however, being a cockhead kind of person, plucked Harkness’s cigarette right out of his mouth and replaced it with his own. And then stole Harkness’s lighter in order to light the stolen cigarette. 

Harkness narrowed his eyes at the lit cigarette between his lips before shaking his head. Maybe just maybe this asshole was capable of being an adequate distraction. He closed his eyes, crossed his arm over his chest, leaned his head back and sucked in a nice, long, cloudy lungful of smoke until he felt lightheaded. He exhaled slowly, a little more steadily, in relief at the hit of nicotine. 

“I don’t like seeing you like this, Chief.” Butch leaned forward, propped up by his arms against the wall on either side of Harkness. Harkness – Harkness wasn’t trapped, though. Neither Harkness nor A3-21  _ got _ trapped. They  _ didn’t _ . But Butch was  _ close _ . In Harkness’s  _ face. _   
  
“Calling me weak?” Harkness raised his head and opened his eyes to meet Butch's.

  
“Hey man, we all got our problems,” Butch cooed thoughtfully, but still staring intensely. Like he was expecting something.

  
“I’m not – I’m just – I’m tired,” Harkness turned his head to the side, breaking the tension, and he took another drag from Butch’s gift cigarette. Smoke came out in a heavy – but steady - sigh.   
  
Butch lifted an arm and rolled to the side to lean against the wall. He, too, took another drag and sighed heavily. Then he snorted and shook his head. Harkness could see it out of the corner of his eye. A twentysomething acting like he knew better. Like he knew  _ anything _ .   
  
“Tired already? Must be gettin’ old,” Butch taunted.

Hey. Harkness wasn't _ old _ , he was still in his 30s. Or was Harkness  _ 7 _ years old, since A3-21 was brought online 7 years ago? Or was Harkness 282 years old but just asleep for most of it?   
  
“The way they treat-- they made us to be indistinguishable in every way from you and they think that they didn’t make  _ people _ ?” he paused, finishing off the cigarette with a long sigh. “I've done pretty good at ignoring this shit, and now it's in my face. Memories and mind wipes and chasing runners down and making them  _ unpersons _ , suddenly all these people who want to  _ find  _ me. Want to  _ take  _ me.” Harkness kind of rambled but he was also having a hard time explaining it to somebody who just physically could not understand. Fuck, Harkness  _ himself _ didn't understand, and it had been a while. Harkness closed his eyes. But Butch was down here, being civil, so he had to give him some credit.    
  
“What the hell is an unperson?” Butch asked this question in soft, almost caring tone. Harkness snorted. Right, like Butch had ever read a book in his life.

  
“Ever heard of  _ Nineteen Eighty-Four? _ ” Harkness settled in a little closer, feeling real human warmth. Butch was from a vault, should’ve had a classic high school curriculum with classic pre-war novels. But then again, with how they talked about 101, and the other vaults, maybe that was a book Vault Tec took off their reading list.   
  
He felt Butch stiffen for a second, fingers pause for a second before taking another drag. “Of course,” he declared before falling into silence.

“What is it?” Harkness asked him, clearly disbelieving.

“A year.”   
  
That was probably the stupidest possible answer. “It’s a book,” Harkness drawled. Honestly even if hypothetically the book was on the reading list, Butch’s answer would’ve been the same. 

Not like Harkness was any kind of scholar. But memories of his own time in high school had popped up out of nowhere. Like he'd been searching his own mind for things way deeper than ever before. Because he was actually A3-21, and A3-21 was sifting through Harkness’s memories like a library. Interesting life this guy had led. A short life.   
  
“Ok, so an  _ unperson _ ,” Butch continued on.    
  
“Undoing somebody. Like they never existed. It’s what happened to people who had thought-crimes.” And they were everywhere. He could never escape. His voice had gotten quicker. “Crimes that—" 

“—I can figure that one out myself,” Butch cut him off at the pass. “Sounds like shit, I don’t know why people read books.” While talking, he reached over to the side of Harkness’s face and pushed it so that it was leaning on his shoulder. 

Somewhere around 12 seconds passed in peaceable silence. Butch slowly rubbed Harkness’s shoulder. 

Then, with a jolt of realization, Harkness jerked out of Butch’s grasp and (lightly) elbowed him in the gut. Harkness felt vulnerable and he didn't like it.   
  
“What the fuck was that, man?” and “What do you want?” rang out simultaneously and echoed through the hallway as Butch hunched over dramatically. 

  
“What am  _ I _ doing?  _ I’m _ reelin’ from a punch I got outta nowhere! See what I get for bein’ nice? Fuckin’ security chief my ass,  _ I _ ain’t feelin’ real secure!”   
  


“I didn't hit you that hard, you big baby.”   
  
Butch recovered quickly, brushing invisible dust off his leather shoulders. He easily closed the space Harkness had created between them and grabbed him by the back of his neck, pressing Harkness’s face to his shoulder, like he  _ didn’t _ just get punched. Butch went a step further this time, though, and wrapped his other arm around the dead soldier’s imitation waist. This time Harkness let it happen—no, it was A3-21 who let it happen.   
  
When it was his ex-wife, the one who left him when he was in a coma (but who had actually died 200 years ago and god knows if Harkness was still alive), well, it felt good. A man comforted by the maternal embrace of his wife, somebody he could trust, somebody who would keep him safe. Here, right now, the body he was being held against was firm and solid, the hand rubbing the small of his back was large and heavy. And it  _ felt _ safe, but it belonged to an untrustworthy punk who held very little regard for other people and held A3-21’s fate in his hands.   
  
He stiffened for a second as he was overwhelmed by an absolutely alien feeling of  _ fear _ that he immediately knew came from the robot because it was the kind where you want to freeze, a mind-fear, not fear of being hurt but a fear of being controlled. His heart was pounding like he was having a panic attack.   
  
Butch stiffened too, probably (hopefully) ready to defend himself from an attack, and when none came, Harkness found himself pressed tighter against Butch, back of his neck squeezed harder by Butch. But it was calming, not confining. Harkness realized he hadn't had a real hug in—and A3-21 had only been hugged as an experiment—He relaxed. He hugged back, squeezing tightly. 

  
“You okay, babe?” Butch asked.   
  
Oh,  _ what _ ? Harkness bristled and started to push himself off.   
  
Butch released him with a douchey, dramatic sigh. “Why you gotta be such an Ice Queen, man?” 

Harkness regarded Butch warily, like a wild animal with a broken leg.  _ That _ was Butch's angle. Though he was the furthest thing from an animal that there could be, wasn’t he? 

“You’re gettin’ weird, DeLoria. Don’t make this weird.” Butch and him had had some tense encounters, and Butch wasn't shy about what he thought, and maybe there might have been some near-misses, but he didn't know Butch wanted to actually get to know him. Nobody needed that shit, it led to trust, and that never led to anywhere good. Harkness couldn’t even trust  _ himself _ .    
  
Butch sighed loudly and gave up. Harkness stumbled back until he was leaning against the opposite wall, pale blue eyes piercing holes through Butch’s head, studying him intently. It was a control thing. It  _ had _ to be a control thing. Harkness crossed his arms, watching DeLoria, defensive and on edge. It was about taking advantage of weakness. Friends with the Lone Wanderer or not, Butch was not a good guy.

“ _ Baby _ ,” Butch started, with so much dramatic condescension that Harkness rolled his eyes. No, Butch was just being himself. Butch was too stupid to manipulate people. (Still, A3-21 was reminded of the Institute, the way Zimmer talked to him, like a child, like what he knew he felt wasn’t real. Like  _ he  _ wasn’t real—)“You don’t gotta do that tough-guy routine all the time, y’know.” 

Said  _ Butch DeLoria _ , the wannabe gangster with a pompadour and a leather jacket with a  _ snake _ on it and a bizarre Jerseyan accent that the Lone Wanderer  _ didn’t _ have. 

“Guy out here strutting around in leather like the vault he came from was a  _ barrio _ and he tells me I have a tough-guy complex.” Harkness gave an open-mouthed smirk. Rich.    
  
“—Hey man, I’m just in it for the fashion,” Butch interrupted him with cocky lightness. That was a good one. The young man tapped his cigarette until ash fell on the metal floor. Butch studied the cigarette for a moment in silence, determining it was used up and tossing it on the floor. He crushed it under his boot, folded his arms again, and turned his eyes back to Harkness. 

In his eyes was something awful – that look of absolutely  _ ignorant _ ‘understanding.’ Suddenly Harkness had never felt so alienated. (A3-21 had. It was the look runners gave him when he told them they were malfunctioning.)    
  
Harkness didn’t want that. Didn’t need to see that.  _ Anything _ but that. “Shove your pity up your ass, kid, I’m a fuckin’ robot assassin.” When a guy’s biggest problem was that he was a robot assassin, then that guy didn’t really have any problems. At least that's what he had been telling himself for a couple years, however long it had been, and it had worked pretty well for the most part. Because it was never in his face. The Institute had never been upstairs.

A pang of sudden worry shot through him as he heard the faint echo of his words against the metal. Jesus God why did he say that out loud? Did somebody else hear him? He closed his eyes. He sighed. He slouched, neck already heavy from carrying this albatross. Maybe if he was lucky it would just snap. 

Being security chief of Rivet City, he kept people safe. He’d take all the hits in the world to protect these people – because he  _ knew _ he could  _ take _ those hits. But  _ now  _ – now his eyes snapped up at the ceiling when he heard the muffled sound of laughter coming from the marketplace. Maybe they  _ had  _ heard him. A handful of numbers and he’d be a slave and he’d never know. A fate worse than death was a trite thing to say, but that’s what it was, and it could happen so easy. It wasn’t fair. 

The memories of Harkness’s life before the war hadn’t meshed well with the memories he made after. He already  _ thought _ he had a secret, that he was from . . . before. That had been bad enough, everything you knew and loved gone, like way gone, like  _ 200 years  _ gone. But he got along all right. He learned to make peace with it. Was able to move on best as anyone could.

And then  _ this _ . Another lie. Another secret, his  _ real _ secret. That these weren’t even his memories, they were stolen from some soldier in a coma who was digitized in a vault. Or maybe he  _ was  _ Harkness, a guy whose mind was loaded up into an android, but that android just so happened to have already been occupied. But it wasn’t supposed to be this way, that’s not what what Vault Tec had promised, to save fallen soldiers’ lives. That’s not what A3-21 had been promised, he’d been promised to never ever remember, to never ever know the truth. 

He searched his pockets for his pack of cigarettes. Chain smoking wasn’t great but it’s not like he was gonna die of cancer. Fucking cargo pants with so many fucking pockets. Harkness managed to find them, and he took one out, but then he couldn’t find his lighter. 

When the heat of a tiny flame drew his attention forward again, he remembered why. Butch had taken it. Harkness dipped the tip of his cigarette in the flame until it was lit, and brought it to his mouth and smoked deeply.

“You’re all right, Chief,” Butch said with a chuckle.

Harkness grunted. 

  
  



End file.
